Tomato Primer for the Obama Garden: Corrections Wanted (and a poll)

Ketchupophobia

All right, I'm a beginning gardener, and I fear tomatoes. 

People who grow tomatoes seem like Master Gardeners. Someone who pulls a tomato out of their harvest basket might as well say, "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair." 

My lone and level garden stretches far and away, devoid of tomato vines and stakes. 

But tomatoes are a bountiful crop and are wonderful to give to people who need some produce in their lives. They're high in vitamin A, vitamin C, lycopene, and potassium, not to mention that they're tasty on pasta or in salads or chopped into rice. 

This year, I'm screwing my courage to the sticking place. I'm a scuba diver, hiker, and surfer.  

This year, I'm growing tomatoes in my Obama Garden. 

Determinate and Indeterminate Tomatoes

First: there are two kinds of tomatoes with regard to when they bear fruit: "determinate" or "indeterminate." 

Determinate tomatoes are bush or tumbling plants, often more suited for container gardening, that grow to be 1 to 3 feet tall. They produce flowers on their vine tips, stop growing, and then develop all their fruit quickly and all at once. They require less care than the other kind. 

Indeterminate tomatoes, also called cordon tomatoes, are the traditional lanky tomato vines that grow 6 to 20 feet long. They grow longer and produce new flowers and fruit all season long. You can control the growth of these tomatoes by training them on a trellis and pruning sideshoots. You must pinch off any sideshoots that grow between the main stem and any leafy stems, and you must pinch off the top in mid- to late-season. That directs the energy into ripening fruits rather than growing taller stems. 

Site and Soil 

Tomatoes like heat, so plant them in a spot protected from the wind but in full sun. Next to a sunny wall is often good, as they soak up the heat reradiated from the wall. 

They like moderately rich soil, so create a well of compost in the ground for each transplant. In containers, use generous amounts of compost. 

Water them well. Tomatoes need a steady supply of moisture and won't produce well unless they're kept moist. 

When to Plant

 

Planting too late is a lot better than planting too early.  Soil temperatures of less than 50F or any sort of too-cold night will shock the poor little plants. One book said that seedlings planted in June in the Northeast will grow faster and outproduce plants that were set out earlier. 

"Harden off" your seedings for up to two weeks before transplanting them. This means acclimating them to the outdoors. For a tender little seedling that hasn't ever been in a breeze, the outside world is a scary place. 

Place your little seedlings outside for 2 hours in a sheltered, shady spot at first, like under a tree, then for longer amounts of time each day. After two or three days, introduce them to the sun for two hours, then put them under the tree for the rest of the day. Gradually increase their direct sun time, too. Take them in at night or whenever the weather turns cold or windy. Keep them watered. Transplanting on an overcast day is ideal. 

Tips 

Mulch early and often to conserve water. Red plastic mulch may increase yields. Water often. 

If you're container gardening, when you plant, insert a watering system. An easy one is to take a 1- or 2-liter bottle, leave the cap on, and drill about 15 small holes in the top (near the cap) of the bottle. Then cut or drill a larger hole in the bottom of the bottle. Plant the bottle, cap-down, in the container with your tomato plants, about 1/2 or 2/3 buried. Fill the bottle with water through the one large hole with a watering can or hose. The water will slowly leach through the small holes into the soil. 

Harvesting

If you're growing indeterminate tomatoes, pick fruits as they ripen to encourage the plants to bloom and bear more fruit. Twist the fruits to remove them gently, or cut the stem close to the tomato. 

If you're growing determinate tomatoes, you're going to be very busy for about a week. Pick every day. 

Seed Savers Tomato Page 

Burpee's Tomato Top Page

Please comment on any tips you have or anything that I got wrong. I'll edit the main post with corrections. 

TK Kenyon 

When to Start Planting: Last Frost-Free Dates

I live in the fridgid Northeast. For a transplanted Arizonan, it's really flipping cold up here. 

My raised garden bed that I built last fall is under two feet of snow. It will be a while until I can plant anything in there. 

However, you can begin planting now! Yes, even with almost two feet of snow on the ground, you can plant seeds in the dirt and watch the growth! Hallalujah! 

You can begin pre-planting seeds for transplants. In areas like the northeast, this is an excellent way to extend the growing season and begin harvesting earlier. 

Here's an even more detailed map of climate zones. I'm evidently in Zone 6b. Link to: Detailed Climate Zones by The Garden Helper. 

Start peppers and tomatoes three weeks before your climate zones last frost-free date. Here in Climate Zone 6b, that means my average frost date is April 15. (Such an auspicious day, anyway.) That means that I can start tomatoes and peppers in the end of March or beginning of April. 

Well, I can plan, anyway. 

Y'all folks who live in the southern tips of Texas, Florida, and Louisiana: start planting now! (You lucky ducks.) 

Good luck. 

TK Kenyon, www.tkkenyon.com  

Author of RABID and CALLOUS: Two novels about science and religion, with some sex and murder.

Why Gardens Will Work

A $3 packet of seeds can yield 5 pounds of lettuce, 8 pounds of green beans, 20 pounds of carrots, or 120 summer squash. Zucchini will indeed give you great veg for the buck. They are the hyperfertile rabbits of the vegetable world. 

Depending on the variety and the care it receives, one tomato plant can yield more than 10 pounds of fruit, and in a packet of seeds, there are some 30 potential little tomato plants. That's 300 pounds of tomatoes per pack. 

That's a return on your investment. Heck, after buying one packet of cilantro seeds a couple years ago, I let some plants go to seed and have had a self-sustaining cilantro pot ever since. Multiple plantings during the growing season reap multiple harvests. 

TK Kenyon 

 

Why a Garden?

I don't usually get too personal in blogs, but there're personal reasons why I thought of the Obama Garden. 

My husband is employed by a large pharmaceutical company that was recently taken over by an even larger one. Takeovers are notorious for producing huge layoffs. The takeover company has mentioned that they will pfire ten thousand people before this deal is done. (No, that's not a typo.) Probably twenty thousand.  Or more. 

Three weeks ago, I thought we were perfectly secure, economically. Indeed, I was getting a job with the aforementioned large pharm company. My office space was already assigned. The verbal offer had been spoken and accepted. I had stopped taking consulting jobs a couple months ago in preparation for my new job, so my consulting income dried up. 

Suddenly, HR got balky. Then the rumors started. 

By the next Monday at 7:00 AM, the takeover was hot news on CNBC. 

Then, my new job evaporated. 

And we were suddenly very worried about my husband's job. Twenty thousand people are going to be laid off from his company. That's a scary percentage of the employees. 

We went from the tax bracket that Obama plans to increase taxes on to ZERO over one weekend, at least in our fears. 

One of my thoughts amidst the panic was, "At least I put in garden beds last fall. With $20 worth of seeds, at least I can keep us in fresh vegetables for the season, if he gets laid off. We can survive on beans, rice, and my garden." 

We're more secure about his job, now. At least we're less worried considering the severence package that we've read about, plus my darling hubby has already been offered two jobs with other companies, if he does get laid off. He's a smart guy. His project seems to be important to the taking-over company. There is at least a moderate chance that he will be retained. 

I've started looking for consulting business again. (If you're a pharmaceutical company in need of a consultant, go to www.consultingtk.com.) 

We're not too badly off, considering. We have options. 

Others, out there, are in much worse shape than we are. While I allowed myself a moment of relief that we aren't in quite as much financial trouble as I first thought, I had seen that abyss.

The layoff abyss is a scary place. We were calculating when to sell the house (now? when the merger closes? before or after layoffs decimate this county's economy?) and whether we'd have to move in with my parents. 

I started looking for full-time jobs anywhere, even if my husband and I had to live apart for a while. 

Some of my friends are still staring into that abyss. A lot of people I don't know are staring into it or are falling into it, right now. 

My garden might help some of them. So I'm planning to plant an intensely cultivated garden to help them. Nobody turns away a perfectly ripe tomato or butternut squash. They might make a nice addition to the rice and ramen. 

TK Kenyon 

When Should I Plant Stuff?

First, you need to figure out what climate zone you're in. This is easily done. 

Go to this page: Zone Finder by Burpee

Type in your zip code, and it will tell you. 

Now, buy seeds. Look at the back of the seed packet and it will tell you when to plant the seeds by your zone. 

Easy, eh? 

TK Kenyon

Six Basic Obama Gardening Tips -- How To Start for Beginners

1.  Start small. It's better to grow a few veggies well than try to grow a bunch, do it badly, and get no harvest at all. 

Containers are easy and great, and you can grow almost anything in a container that you can grow in the ground. See this post on a lady who grew a great crop of butternut squashes in containers. 

Besides, as the old adage goes, it's not how big your garden is; it's what you do with it that matters. 

2. Start a compost pile. It's easier than you think. You do not need to buy one of those expensive but nifty fermenter boxes. 

To make my compost pile last year, I took the box that our TV came in last year, made it round instead of a rectangle, and surrounded it with stakes and nylon chicken wire that we already had in the garage. (The chicken wire and stakes had been used as a temporary dog run while my parents and their pooch visited.) 

Then, I dumped lawn clippings, leaves, shreds from the paper shredder, and kitchen waste in there. You should aim for a mix of about half "brown waste" (dry waste: paper shreds, shredded leaves, etc.,) to half "green waste" (lawn clippings, manure, kitchen waste. Do not try to compost banana peels. They don't ever degrade. Do toss in coffee grounds.) 

Good composting article at HGTV.com here. 

3. Mulch. I saved last year's leaves in big, black bags to use as mulch this year. You can use just about anything as mulch: shredded bark and wood that you buy in a home store, pine needles if you have a pine tree that sheds needles, or hay or straw from a feed store (very inexpensive, a bale is cheap, cheap, cheap.) Good article on mulch here. 

4. Water if necessary. Water deeply and in the morning. If it's rained and the soil is nicely damp, skip watering. 

5. Start with easy plants. Really, just about anybody can grow a bumper crop of zucchini, carrots, radishes, or butternut squash. Personally, I'm not ready to grow tomatoes. I respect gardeners who do, but I know my skills and time aren't up to it. 

6. Tend often. Tending ten minutes a day, say right when you get home from work, is much better than two hours on the weekend. Stop by your plots, gather a few weeds, scoop some soil up higher on the squash hills, dump some water on anybody who looks dry, and go in the house. 

Good luck, 

TK Kenyon 

Container Gardening for Butternut Squash

This review is from Burpee.com, about "Burpee's Butterbush" 

"This was my first time growing squash and I was very pleased with this variety. I grew 6 of these plants. I planted them in Miracle grow soil using 6, 5 gallon buckets in my front yard which has full sun. Plants produced 32 squash that where between 1-2 lbs each. I only sprayed twice this season for some bugs. Plants were very ornamental and the neighbors loved watching the progress. Squash were kept clean because the plant grew in a mounding format about a foot and a half tall and two feet wide allowing the squash to dangle from the top of the bucket. Not bad return on less than $3.00 of seed and six buckets of soil."

She grew 32 butternut squash, around 50 lbs. of food. 

At my farmer's market, a 2 lb. butternut was $5 last week. That means she grew $160 worth of squash for $3 in seed. 

That's the kind of value that we need to inject into this ecomony. That's the kind of help we need to give our neighbors. 

Notice also that she used 5 gallon buckets to grow these butternuts, not a yard plot. You could do this on an apartment balcony. 

TK Kenyon

Garden of Eatin'

Hello, and welcome to The Obama Garden. 

Look, this is a tough time for our country. A lot of people have lost their jobs, almost 600,000 last month alone, (7.6% unemployment at the time I wrote this,) and a lot more people are going to lose their jobs (perhaps 3.2 million more people in 2009.) 

If you don't lose your job, someone you know probably will. A lot of people are going to have some very hard times. A lot of people are going to have to choose between feeding their families or keeping their house. Perhaps the choice will be between buying food or paying exorbitant COBRA health insurance rates. Or buying prescription medicine. 

A lot of people are going to be eating little but ramen or rice. 

It's a terrible time, maybe as terrible as the Great Depression, when Americans starved to death or came darn close to it. 

Here's my opinion: This is America. We have fertile land and strong hands and open hearts. Let's feed our friends. If we feed them, then they can use their money to keep their house or pay for COBRA or buy medicine. 

I'm not just talking about picking up some slimy canned green beans at the grocery store. These are really tough times. We need to not just shuffle money around but to add value to the economy.

We all need to plant a garden. 

Like WWII, when we planted Victory Gardens to help with the war effort, let's plant gardens to feed our friends and ourselves and add sustenance to the economy. 

If someone you know is out of work, take over a box and complain about the exuberant fertility of zucchini. If you don't know someone personally, your local food bank will. This year, they're going to get swamped. 

You can call it whatever you want: a Prosperity Garden, a Friends Garden, or a Helping Hands Garden. Me, I'm going to think of mine as an Obama Garden. 

President Obama is trying his best to lead us out of this economic morass. He's trying to help people stay in their homes and feed their families and pay for COBRA and get their kids some medical help. 

My Obama Garden is my small contribution to the huge job that he needs to do. 

A lot of people say that change is happening. Optimism prevails. That's great. 

Obama can't do it alone. He can't go to the house of every person who's lost a job, comfort them, and personally help them. Even the federal government doesn't have that much money. 

This is just the first post of many, I hope. It's February, and it's time to start planning my Obama Garden. 

TK Kenyon, www.tkkenyon.com  
Author of RABID and CALLOUS: Two novels about science and religion, with some sex and murder.